Ukraine-Russia war live: Protests expected on last day of sham election as ‘shell dropped on polling station’

Critics of president Vladimir Putin have called for protests at Russian polling stations on the final day of the sham presidential elections.

There have been sporadic acts of protests in the first two days of the polls, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes.

Alexei Navalny, Kremlin critic and opposition leader, before his death had called on Russians to stage protests on Sunday. Now, his widow Yulia Navalnaya, has reiterated his call.

She called for protesters to spoil ballots by writing “Navalny” on them or vote for candidates instead of Mr Putin, AFP reported

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said recent successful Ukraine drone strikes on Russian targets revealed vulnerabilities in the Russian war machine.

Ukraine has struck multiple oil refineries in Russia this week, reaching targets in Krasnodar, Samara, Ryazan, Kaluga, Nizhny Novgorod, and Leningrad.

“These weeks have demonstrated to many that the Russian war machine has vulnerabilities that we can reach with our weapons,” Mr Zelensky said in his evening address.

“I am grateful to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, and Defence Intelligence for their new Ukrainian long-range capability.

“What our own drones are capable of is a true Ukrainian long-range capability. Ukraine will now always have a strike force in the sky,” he added.

United Russia, for which Vladimir Putin acts as its de facto ruler but is not representing in these elections, claimed it faced a widespread denial of service attack – a form of cyberattack aimed at paralysing web traffic – and had suspended non-essential services to repel it.

State news agency RIA quoted a senior telecoms official as blaming the cyberattacks on Ukraine and Western countries. They did not provide evidence to substantiate this claim.

Russian citizens will spend this weekend casting their vote for their next president, even though the result has already been decided.

No amount of votes against him can prevent his victory, say the Russian dissident community, since the system is rigged and those that could challenge him have either been killed, imprisoned or exiled.

Ukrainian shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod killed two people, officials said Saturday, while Russia claimed to have thwarted a new attempt by saboteurs to cross the border.

Saturday’s attacks occurred as Russians entered the second day of voting in a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule by another six years after he crushed dissent.

A man and a woman died in the attack and three other people were wounded, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. It was the latest in exchanges of long-range missile and rocket fire in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

With the results of the vote already known in advance, it may be tempting to cast a blind eye to the proceedings, writes Mary Dejevsky. But after the death of Alexei Navalny, and uncertainty around Ukraine, things may not be quite as predictable as they seem…

Editorial: With little doubt over the ‘winner’ of this weekend’s Russian presidential election, the West should take heart that Putin finds himself isolated – and as his country recedes into Stalinism, so too does its economic prospects. His impoverishing of the Russian people will prove his undoing

One person died as fire broke out after Ukraine launched several drones at the Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, official said on Sunday.

“The drones were neutralised, but a fire broke out as a result of the fall of one of the devices,” the operational headquarters of the region in southern Russia said.

The fire was extinguished and there were no casualties as a result of the fire itself, the administration said. Preliminary information indicated, however, one person had died of a heart attack, it added.

Roman Siniagovskyi, head of the Slavyansk administrative district, said on Telegram that the refinery workers were evacuated and there was no threat to nearby populated areas from the incident.